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An anonymous reader writes "Australia refused to give Rebellion's new Aliens Vs. Predator game a rating, effectively banning it in the country. Rebellion says it won't be submitting an edited version for another round of classifications, however. (As Valve did with Left 4 Dead 2.) They said, 'We will not be releasing a sanitized or cut down version for territories where adults are not considered by their governments to be able to make their own entertainment choices.'"

Refusal to put up with bullshit like Australia and Germany's ratings boards is the only way to bring them down. Tolerance for censorship only breeds familiarity and further tolerance.

Unfortunately the publishers boycotting nations will do nothing. It's the citizens that need to act. That being said, I agree with the publishers stance.

In case you don't know, the R18+ rating for video games in Australia is being held up by 1 man, South Australian Attorney General Michael Atkinson. There are already several campaigns underway to remove Mr Atkinson from his seat of Croydon. Video games are the only media in Australia that do not use the R18+ rating so the highest rating a game can get is M15 which is why L4D and AVP were rejected (extreme graphic violence), if they had of been books or movies they would have got the R18 rating and been released under our classification guidelines, because there is M15 is the highest rating our classification board can give to a video game they have no choice but to follow their mandate and give an RC rating to the game. It's the law that must be changed, that means changing Atkinson.

Our Parallel import laws are another thing, this way we can get around these stupid RC classifications as we can order games from the US, UK or Asia (Hong Kong being quite popular) so for PC gamers this isn't so much of an issue, for console gamers you still have to contend with the region locks.

Yeah, because places like Canada and Norway, and most other countries where these games are also legally purchased are having those problems as well.

Oh. Wait.

I've heard of people making the mistake of assuming correlation to mean a possible causal link, but this doesn't even correlate in most countries that have no problem allowing these games. Your reasoning is the same as Homer wanting Lisa's tiger repelling rock.

The problems you describe have to do with much larger underlying problems than anything video games of any sort bring to the table.

Bullshit. The best one man can do to "rebel" is to assassinate an elected leader. Thus derailing the whole democratic process. If you could convince a group of men to resist they become terrorists. If you could convince a whole county or state to resist THEN you might have a legitimate contention, but the fact of the matter is the idea of armed rebellion is quaint and irrelevant today.

But all that aside, do you REALLY believe violence is an appropriate response to the banning of a video game? And what about when you realize the banning is largely symbolic because the game can easily be ordered online? Put down your guns and gain some perspective you psycho!

I honestly don't know how much money the guy makes. I met him in a terminal at JFK. Saw him wearing a Ruger shirt and asked him where he got it -- he told me he worked for them. Asked him what his role was and he said he was the CEO. Talked to him for a few minutes about the firearms industry in general and Ruger in particular. He seemed pretty down to earth.

The GP was either trolling or misinformed. The stereotype of the big scary "gun industry" is just that. Most of the American gun companies aren't all that big. Ruger has a market cap of 202 million. Smith & Wesson has a market cap of 264 million. That's peanuts compared to many publicly traded companies.

The explaination is simple. We aren't that fearfull of our fellow countrymen, our prime minister can go for a jog in the morning without a bullet proof vest and a small army, most of us would like it to stay that way.

Well said. As a possible alternative to encouraging Mr Atkinson to move on, the Queensland Government is considering allowing "refused classification" games to be considered as R18+ within that state. There is a e-petition available here: http://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/view/EPetitions_qld/CurrentEPetition.aspx?PetNum=1346&lIndex=-1

The associated wordage is:

Queensland residents draws to the attention of the House that the Classification of Computer Games and Images Act 1995 is currently out of step with the wishes of the electorate. Your petitioners, therefore, request the House that it be amended to permit computer games to receive the R18+ classification when they have been refused classification under the Commonwealth Act.

This might be a shorter term solution if they could make it work - head up to Qld for a weekend of sunshine and some grownup videogame purchases. Kinda like Canberra and porn...

Let me start off by saying I don't know jack about how your system works but it sounds like the problem is with your system.

Not really, the system requires a unanimous vote because each Attorney General represents one of Australia's states. Requiring a unanimous vote prevents 4 out of the 7 deciding things for everyone, it also assures that extremist ratings cannot be entered in as easily nor can existing ratings be removed at the drop of a hat. It may only take one AG to stop R18 for games being introduced but the flip side of this is it will only take one AG to prevent R18 for movies being taken away. The idea behind a unanimous vote is to get a ratings system that everyone agrees with via negotiation rather then the slim majority forcing its views.

The system is not broken, one cog in the system is refusing to turn and that cog is Mr Atkinson. Replacing the entire system for one broken part seems a bit backwards to me.

Besides this the parliament and state parliaments can overturn the ratings board and permit RC games to be sold as R18 as Queensland is proposing (X rated porn is only sold in one Australian state for example). I think if push comes to shove they'll get rid of Atkinson before the ratings board becomes redundant.